Addiction in Cinema
It has been my pleasure recently to have seen several very fine movies-- what a good time of year it is for that! Two of them have especially stood out, not just because they were good movies, but because of the ways they so frankly dealt with addicts and addiction.
One was George Clooney's Michael Clayton. The plot of the movie had to do with the extent to which Big Business is willing to go in order to cover up the harm it does. But what I found interesting was this contrast: the hero was an addict (gambling) from a family of addicts (drugs, alcohol) while the villain was not an addict and was portrayed as having no family. What I found interesting was that addiction was not demonized. The addicts in fact were the more morally reliable characters than the non-addicts. Ultimately, they were the ones counted on to do the right thing.
The other movie I'd recommend, and was kind of amazed at, was Things We Lost in the Fire, a title whose prescience perhaps adds to its current appeal. Anyway, I went for the story, of grief and mourning and how love works. Halle Berry and Benecio del Toro play the principles, but there is some fine acting by the children in this movie, too. One impression I left the theater with had to do with del Toro's character's addiction to heroin and how it was portrayed-- both rather straightforwardly, and with a sense of compassion. The last scene of the movie was particularly compelling, for it made plain that sobriety is no easy road and recovery always precarious. Yet, there was hope... And again, the addict was no bad man, no ne'er-do-well, but had a loving kindness about him that made us admire and pull for him.
Maybe I don't get out much, or maybe my memory is short, but I don't recall such sympathetic treatments of addicts in movies. It made me wonder: has addiction gone mainstream? Do we now have so many 12 Step programs for so many behaviors that we could reasonably say, as one of my friends claims, "we are all addicts; we are all addicted to something"? Or is Hollywood, which could easily itself be described as a community of addicts, simply trying to mainstream itself-- tell us that we are all like them? Where is the line between "normal" and "addict" these days? Or is "addict" the "new normal?"
You might know that I have a high regard for 12 Step programs, not just for their track records in returning people to sanity and life, but more importantly for their spiritual core and purpose. The 12 Steps make for an excellent spiritual discipline, and recommend themselves on that basis to addicts and non-addicts (if there is such a thing) alike.
Which gets to what I felt was missing from Michael Clayton and Things We Lost in the Fire, namely a sense of the spiritually redemptive power of the 12 Steps. Now, not everything can be included in every movie, but I can hold out this hope for how addiction is portrayed in the future, can't I: that as long as we are being sympathetic, let's also appreciate the spiritual nature of recovering, and the spiritual toll addiction takes?
Even short of that, one thing was clear to me: We have come a long way since Days of Wine and Roses!
One was George Clooney's Michael Clayton. The plot of the movie had to do with the extent to which Big Business is willing to go in order to cover up the harm it does. But what I found interesting was this contrast: the hero was an addict (gambling) from a family of addicts (drugs, alcohol) while the villain was not an addict and was portrayed as having no family. What I found interesting was that addiction was not demonized. The addicts in fact were the more morally reliable characters than the non-addicts. Ultimately, they were the ones counted on to do the right thing.
The other movie I'd recommend, and was kind of amazed at, was Things We Lost in the Fire, a title whose prescience perhaps adds to its current appeal. Anyway, I went for the story, of grief and mourning and how love works. Halle Berry and Benecio del Toro play the principles, but there is some fine acting by the children in this movie, too. One impression I left the theater with had to do with del Toro's character's addiction to heroin and how it was portrayed-- both rather straightforwardly, and with a sense of compassion. The last scene of the movie was particularly compelling, for it made plain that sobriety is no easy road and recovery always precarious. Yet, there was hope... And again, the addict was no bad man, no ne'er-do-well, but had a loving kindness about him that made us admire and pull for him.
Maybe I don't get out much, or maybe my memory is short, but I don't recall such sympathetic treatments of addicts in movies. It made me wonder: has addiction gone mainstream? Do we now have so many 12 Step programs for so many behaviors that we could reasonably say, as one of my friends claims, "we are all addicts; we are all addicted to something"? Or is Hollywood, which could easily itself be described as a community of addicts, simply trying to mainstream itself-- tell us that we are all like them? Where is the line between "normal" and "addict" these days? Or is "addict" the "new normal?"
You might know that I have a high regard for 12 Step programs, not just for their track records in returning people to sanity and life, but more importantly for their spiritual core and purpose. The 12 Steps make for an excellent spiritual discipline, and recommend themselves on that basis to addicts and non-addicts (if there is such a thing) alike.
Which gets to what I felt was missing from Michael Clayton and Things We Lost in the Fire, namely a sense of the spiritually redemptive power of the 12 Steps. Now, not everything can be included in every movie, but I can hold out this hope for how addiction is portrayed in the future, can't I: that as long as we are being sympathetic, let's also appreciate the spiritual nature of recovering, and the spiritual toll addiction takes?
Even short of that, one thing was clear to me: We have come a long way since Days of Wine and Roses!
posted by TRXTR | 10:06 AM
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